Combination of capillary electrophoresis, PCR and physiological assays in differentiation of clinical strains of Staphylococcus aureus

Fast, sensitive and cheap determination of pathogenic bacteria is extremely important in many branches, for example biotechnology, quality control, analysis of samples and antimicrobial therapy. The development and application of analytical techniques in practice could provide new possibilities in this regard. The bacterial pathogen Staphylococcus aureus is responsible for a significant amount of human morbidity and mortality. Rapid and sensitive determination is therefore very important. In the present study, novel methods, based on capillary zone electrophoresis and (as confirmation of these results) molecular analysis of a part of the coag gene, were developed for identification and differentiation of three S. aureus strains. The electrophoretic measurements rely on the differential mobility of bacteria in the fused silica capillary under the direct current electric field. To perform coagulase gene typing, the repeated units encoding hypervariable regions of the S. aureus gene were amplified using the PCR technique followed by restriction enzyme digestion and analysis of restriction fragment length polymorphism patterns as well as sequencing. Finally, the results of electrophoretic measurements with molecular analysis were compared.